The Enforcement Directorate (ED) is expected to file its reply before the Supreme Court Wednesday in connection with the money laundering cases it has registered in the coal blocks allocation scam. The apex court had in November last year asked the agency to file its response in this regard on a plea seeking a direction to ED to probe and take action against the accused under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

The court had fixed the next date of hearing as January 15. The agency, according to sources, is expected to inform the court that it has registered nine cases under the said Act and is in the process of going through all the CBI FIRs filed in the coal blocks allocation case. CBI has filed 16 cases in the coal scam.

The central agency is also understood to be looking at possible instances of forex violation in the case. Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for one of the petitioners on whose plea the apex court is monitoring the probe, had submitted that ED and CBI should act simultaneously like they did in 2G scam and contended that the bench should monitor the ED probe also. ED can attach assets and properties of the accused and their business concerns if its investigation shows that they came from “proceeds of crime.”